My Mission
I am on a mission. It starts with my fundamental belief that all parents love their children and want to protect them, no matter what. The battle with addiction is insidious. When addiction takes hold, it destroys everything and everyone in it’s path. It ravages the addict and destroys all relationships. Make no mistake, the addict can not bear the love reflected back at them when active. The act of using and all behaviors and lifestyle that it entails, requires self loathing. The addict will blame you, shame you, and vilify you. We have to, it fuels the continued use.
As a Mom, I remember the moment they put my baby in my arms. I remember the promises I made. As an addict I knew what I was up against and what they would be up against. I remember saying, “I might not know what to do, but I know what not to do.” I knew I didn’t have the answers but I had a flashlight and the only thing on this planet pure enough to overcome addiction, love. Unconditional love. No parent wants to turn their back on their child. No parent wants to look at their child with disgust. No parent wants to go back on that first promise. Yet, generation after generation that is exactly where it ends up. Parents receiving ‘the call’ and feeling relief because the madness has ended instead of the overwhelming and unbearable grief of losing a child. Addiction will steal your right to grieve as well as your right to love.
I know how to protect this love. I know how and why parents get to the point of walking away. I know the hopelessness and the thoughts that brought me to the place where I felt ‘tough love’ was my only choice to self preserve. My Dad showed me how to stay in the game. I can show you and teach you how.
Here is where my mission begins. I am one family, love intact. I have been battling my son’s addiction for over a year, I love him as much now as I did the day the docs put him in my arms, and I am living with an addict in relapse. We are a team. If I can hold him and love him when he is high, you can do it too with your addicted teen. I don’t feel ashamed or disgusted or scared any more. I am responsible for my emotions and apply the steps in accordance to the Stage of Change my son is in. When I’m with my daughter, we laugh and talk about her, and my focus is on her 100%, I’m no longer distracted by the whirling thoughts or chaos of her brother’s addiction. Because of this, her relationship with her brother has been restored.
Now, picture this… I teach you this gift. I teach 100 families this gift. You Pass It On and teach one family this gift, maybe 100. WE heal addiction from the inside out. When an adult is addicted, we have to wait for their ‘bottom’. This is not the case with kids. The parent directs recovery. We are the ones responsible for teaching resilience and compassion without judgement. What if we teach our addicted teens how beautiful they really are, even active, and they grow up and show this same love, resilience, and compassion without judgement to another?
I am on a mission. I want to change the way the world views addiction and I want to save lives and families. I want to save souls. I’m tired of burying addicts and consoling parents, wishing I could have done more. I don’t know why some get to be sober and others don’t. I do know that every parent has a right to love their child completely, no matter what cross they have to bear in this life. I want to take from addiction it’s deepest desire, destruction of love. I am focusing on the family because that is where love begins. I can show and support the parent, that raises and loves the child, that helps the stranger. We can change the world one addict at a time. We can teach and extend unconditional love to our families and then to the stranger without fear because we own our boundary.
I know this seems like a lofty mission. I can assure you when I got sober at 17, I did not for one second think I would still be sober at 50. I go big. I take it one step at a time, one day at a time and then… I P.A.S.S. It On.
